


That’s My Ego That You’re Stroking

by gonan



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments (Movies), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Human AU, M/M, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonan/pseuds/gonan
Summary: Alec thought that his new neighbor looked familiar, but as soon as he realizes the guy is a retired porn star, things go from complicated to downright mortifying horribly fast. Especially when he starts flirting with Alec every time they see each other.Magnus just wants to know what he did to piss off the attractive man next door. He turns the other way to avoid him in the hallway, never greets him first, and always stands as stiff as a board when they do speak. But Magnus is nothing if not persistent, and he’s determined to have a civil relationship with his neighbor - if not a little more than that.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 13
Kudos: 74





	That’s My Ego That You’re Stroking

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my first published malec fic since like. season 2b was airing. i can’t believe i forgot they existed for two solid years...my gravest mistake

When Alec thinks back on it from the safety of his living room couch tonight, he’ll convince himself it wasn’t that bad. But right now, in the moment, it is the most embarrassing encounter he’s had to date.

He’s just returning from another Lightwood family bar crawl - not to be confused with a Lightwood family game night or a Lightwood family movie night - wearing the same clothes he’s been in since morning. It’s four am, which is an hour that no human being should be awake, whether just going to sleep or just waking up. Even with his strict routine, he doesn’t get up until 6. All he wants to do is sleep away the last remnants of his Blue Moon haze and spend the entirety of his upcoming Saturday in bed with a hangover, but of course the universe can’t just grant his one simple request. Of course not. Instead there’s a strange man and a slew of boxes blocking the hallway right between Alec and his freedom, his tranquility, his —

“Oh,” the man turns around in an artful whirl, sending one of the many silver chains dangling from his pants clacking against another. “I wasn’t expecting to see anyone else around at this hour.”

And the guy looks like he’s seconds away from walking a runway somewhere. Everything about him is put-together and elegant, from the top of his head to the point of his Italian loafers. Alec is seriously struggling to form a coherent thought in response to the lilting words that trip like honey from the man’s tongue. He’s incomprehensibly gorgeous, but also familiar, which does not make sense in the scope of Alec’s very boring and near-virginal life.

He’s only been to a gay club once at Izzy’s insistance. He's had two boyfriends in total — if you don’t count the misguided fling with his boss at Menchie’s that got him fired — and he’s had about one horribly uncomfortable one night stand besides. There is no context in which this man would have existed in his life. At least not in that capacity. 

Alec stares intently at anything he can find that might jog his memory — the blonde ombré of his coiffed hair, his golden features, the open buttons of his silken dress shirt — and, okay, he’s not nearly as focused on placing him as he is on borderline ogling him. But he’s not entirely coherent right now, and you can’t blame a guy for drooling over someone built like sin personified.

When he doesn’t say anything, the man glances around at the boxes littering his front step and gasps. He does so daintily, fingers splayed over his mouth, and on anyone else the expression would probably look ridiculous. As it is, Alec is likely to find just about anything he does inhumanly charming.

“Forgive me. Do you need me to move something?”

“You, uh,” Alec says eloquently. “You’re…”

“Magnus Bane. Your new neighbor. A pleasure, if I’ve ever had one,” he doesn’t wait for Alec to extend his hand and reaches forward to take it from where it hangs awkwardly at his side. Alec startles, nearly catching flame as their skin meets. Magnus’s hand is smaller, warmer, and his nails have been painted a striking shade of rose gold. His grip is firm, though, firmer than Alec is expecting, and he nearly stumbles in his half-drunken fog at the force of it.

“Alec. Lightwood,” he says in return. Magnus’s answering smile is blinding, as if he’s just been told his name is Brad Pitt rather than something as boring as  _ Alec _ , but he takes it as the pleasantry it likely is and drops the man’s hand to avoid embarrassing himself further. God forbid he put himself in one of those “I held on too long and now you think I’m the touch-starved floor six weirdo” situations that he happens upon more often than he’d like to admit. There’s a gentle throb starting in his knuckles already, and he might actually have a red mark across them tomorrow. He tries to rub at them as discreetly as he can. 

Logically he knows that the apartment next to his has been vacant for the past month or so, but he hadn’t quite connected the dots to that meaning he’d have a new floor mate as soon as his landlord could secure a tenant. In Brooklyn it didn’t take long, and it was honestly surprising that someone hadn’t moved in as soon as his old neighbors had loaded up their minivan. 

“And here I thought I was the only person awake for miles,” he says when nothing cleverer comes to mind. He really wishes he were the type to thrive in conversations with people he finds attractive, but alas, he seems to have drawn the short end of the stick from the Lightwood gene pool. Every one of his siblings is a smoothtalker — even his  _ adopted _ brother — but all he has going for him are his mother’s time management skills and practicality. He always thought he preferred it that way as well. Go figure.

“The city that never sleeps is right around the corner, darling,” Magnus says, arms fluid as they sweep out towards the world beyond the thin walls of their building. His smile hasn’t dimmed a single watt, and Alec wonders if the strain of it hurts or if that’s how he keeps his cheekbones sat so high up on his face. “I’ve got to be at work dreadfully early today, so I’m afraid this is the only free time I have to move in.”

“You work weekends?” Alec asks, curious to know what such a man could possibly do for a living. He’s also a bit eager to redirect the attention from how his stomach fizzes at the way Magnus uses pet names with people he’s just met. Not that Magnus needs to know that. 

“Oh, I’m much busier on the weekends. I’m a stylist,” Alec should’ve guessed as much, but he’s admittedly not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to fashion. Magnus seems to think so too, as he eyes Alec up and down slowly before saying, “I could bring you in for a consultation, if you’d like.”

“I’m sure I need it,” Alec says, a nervous chuckle escaping him as he becomes hyper aware of the way his monochrome outfit sticks to his body as he shifts. Jace had spilled tequila on him somewhere around the 2am mark, and he’s still silently plotting his revenge for the next time they meet. 

Magnus makes a small noise of disagreement. “On the contrary. I think you look rather dashing in black.”

Alec just about chokes on his own spit. He fumbles for something to say in response to that, finally settling on a lame, “Yeah?”

Magnus hums. “What is it they say? Tall, dark, and handsome? It suits you,” he gives Alec a wink that sends a small dusting of glitter twirling from his lashes, an almost imperceptible difference with how much glitter covers the rest of his person. Now Alec is sure he’s seen him before, and the niggling itch it sparks at the back of his mind will likely bother him for the rest of the night.

Alec coughs in some sort of sad attempt to gather himself, nodding towards the pile of boxes at their feet. “Do you, uh, need any help? I’m a little buzzed, but…” he trails off as he scans the stack closest to him. Some of the containers are truly massive. If he’s going to do this, he’ll need to free up his range of motion.

He shrugs off his leather jacket, realizing only after it’s slung over his shoulder that now the only thing between Magnus and his torso is the stupid skintight v-neck Izzy made him wear. It hides nothing, not the shape of his body nor the stark tattoos peppering the pale expanse of his arms. Magnus doesn’t seem to mind in the slightest. Alec feels rather than sees his gaze slipping from one bit of exposed skin to the next, searing a trail along his upper body. Sober Alec would never strip down so easily in front of a stranger, but Sober Alec won’t be back until at least the early afternoon. He misses him dearly. 

“Such a gentleman,” Magnus says, entering Alec’s space before he can fully process it and pressing a finger to the center of his chest. Those glittery lashes blink up at him innocently, working overtime to make up for the wicked edge curling at his radiant smile. “As tempted as I am to watch those muscles in action, I wouldn’t dream of keeping you up any later. I assure you I can handle a little heavy lifting.”

Alec swallows around the excess moisture building in his mouth. Having Magnus this close is like being allowed past the velvet rope at a museum, getting to see the detail chiseled out in a marble statue and feel its touch as it comes to life. He seems too beautiful to be real, which is one of those things that if said aloud Jace would rib him for being a hopeless romantic. “Magnus Bane” doesn’t even sound like a real name, it sounds like some sort of porn pseudonym for a hard top that only agreed to fuck guys because he has to pay his own way through college.

That’s when it hits him, and when it does it hits with the force of a truckful of bricks being unloaded onto his head.

Magnus Bane. 

Magnus.

Magnum.

_ Fuck.  _

There aren’t many pornstars that Alec keeps track of by name, let alone whose work he follows, but there’s always been a singular exception to that rule. Back when he first worked up the nerve to watch gay porn, he’d stumbled across a guy called Magnum Johnson in some low-budget threesome and immediately been enthralled. He hadn’t found anyone until then, and hasn’t found anyone since, that was so natural and free with their movements and expressions. Magnum was notorious for being in both straight and gay films, top and bottom — though it held little appeal to Alec to watch him with a woman, strap or no. Other than those he’s sure he’s watched just about everything the guy’s been in from his debut to retirement, and that all started in the confines of his tiny NYU dorm room where he was finally free of the worry that someone from his family would barge in and see what he was getting off to.

He feels sorry for his college roommate. He really does. That year changed a lot of things for him.

And now the man that he’s seen naked on a screen more times than he can count is standing right in front of him, eyebrows raised and lips wet with a sheen of spit and gloss. Alec is not sure if he’s frozen in time or if he’s been staring silently into empty space for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Probably the latter. It doesn’t matter much, because every sense is returning to him at once, and he thinks if he spends another moment alone with Magnus he’ll do something stupid like ask for an autograph or pop a boner.

“Huh? Uh, yeah. Will you excuse —” Alec backs away slowly, making the mistake of keeping his eyes on Magnus’s piercing brown gaze and not on where he’s going. He bumps into a stack behind him and runs into a lone box on the ground, one foot catching on the side of it and sending him lurching forward in an awkward half-jump half-trip. His jacket falls on top of it with a soft thud. “Shit. Sorry,” he says, gathering the garment as quickly as he can before rustling in it for his keys. The relief that comes from the feeling of the cold metal biting into his palm is unreal. “See you around then.”

“I hope so,” Magnus says, leaning an elbow against the stack Alec collided with to prop his head up on his hand. The other hand raises for a cheeky wave that’s all wiggling fingers and clinking rings. Alec is sure that if he doesn’t die on his doorstep right now, he sure will if he ever runs into Magnus again. 

The sound of the door closing behind him is music to his ears. He can still hear the muffled sounds of Magnus moving on the other side of the wall, but as long as he doesn’t have to look him in the eye ever again Alec thinks he might just be able to go on living in this apartment semi-peacefully. If Magnus has someone over for the night that’ll be another story, but he can cross that bridge when he comes to it.

Now that Alec is alone he has the sense to seek out confirmation for his suspicions. He knows he has one of Magnum’s dvds somewhere, if not in the display case then stuffed away somewhere so Izzy can’t find it when she visits. He just about upturns his entire apartment in his search for the thing, moving from the living room to the storage under his bed with a speed that rivals that of his little cousin when she’s hopped up on Fun Dip. The thought to check his phone doesn’t even cross his mind in the midst of his urgency, something that he’d kick himself for if he weren’t so focused on the task at hand. 

His fingertips finally brush the edge of a dvd case at the bottom of his bed stash. He pulls it out anxiously to see if it’s the disc he thinks it is and if the person on the cover looks anything like Magnus. And sure enough, there he is, ten years younger and much less clothed, but still clearly the same man that is in the hallway moving into the apartment next to Alec’s at this very moment.

_ Magnum Johnson Teaches Horny Twink a Lesson _ . Jesus Effing Christ.

Alec thrusts his head heavenwards and bangs the base of his skull against his bedroom door repeatedly. He’s never leaving this room again. Not for the rest of the weekend at least. He thinks he has enough food to last him through it, and if not he’s more than willing to suffer the mortifying fate of starving in a carefully crafted blanket cocoon of his own shame. It’s not how he expected to go, but he’s resigned to it.

Magnus probably already thinks he’s insane anyway, so Alec doesn’t care if he hears him pitifully call out to whoever up there might be listening,

“What did I ever do to you?!”

**Author's Note:**

> trying something new to cure my writer’s block instead of continuously struggling to finish chapters for my other series. kudos/comments mean a lot so lmk if you guys like it!
> 
> btw i’m sure Magnum Johnson is someone’s actual porn name but i was too scared to look it up so please turn a blind eye just this once xx


End file.
